Cast: Arjun Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, Ronit Roy, Amrita Singh,
Revathi, Shiv Subramaniam
Director: Abhishek Varman
Rating: Four Stars
Magically,
2 States ends with a beautifully staged wedding
where the film's culture-crossed couple finally get their wish.
Sigh of relief? Not quite. This is a film you don't want to end. It's a
story.... but wait, it doesn't seem like a story!! Not in the sense of 'Once
upon a time when Boy Met Girl'. You know exactly where our twosome, the gorgeous
Ananya and the diffident Krish are going... But you get so sucked into their
journey, their courtship, conflicts, tiffs and buts, that you feel after a
point that you aren't watching them in a film. They are people we know. And
love.
Some come, fall in love. These are people whom you'll carry home and keep in
some corner of your heart. Not just (gorgeous) Ananya (who incidentally is
played by the very gorgeous Alia Bhatt) and her other-half Krish, but also
their parents, specially Krish's father a man so misunderstood all his life he
fears being recognized for some deeply-concealed goodness in his heart that
comes out towards the end of this film (that you wish would never end).
Indian marriages, they say, are the marriage of two families. Sure enough, when
the shy repressed Punjabi Krish meets the spunky spirited beer-guzzling,
chicken-chewing Ananya, there is hell to pay from both sides.
The thing about cultural stereotyping is that it very often does exist in
exactly the forms that we see them exist in films and books. Chetan Bhagat's
lively novel from which this film is adapted, harps on the stereotypes in a way
where we don't see the characters as "types" but as individuals who
conform to a type. This delectable game of slotting the individual is best
illustrated by Krish's loud-brassy Punjabi mom who behaves like a cross between
Kirron Kher and what Vidya Balan in Rajkumar Gupta's
Ghanchakkar would
have been had she grown older and had a son. Oh yes, Revathi as Ananya's
graceful Tamil mother is also outstanding, though Amrita's performance would
easily shout her down in the Who Is The Better Mother contest.
Amrita Singh's true-to-type Punjabi housewife's character (you know the kind
who has given herself the liberty to say the most insulting things to people
who are not like her) gradually melts down in the narrative as her dark secret
shame - "a drunken abusive husband" - comes out in the open.
Ronit Roy, that fine actor is no stranger to playing the abusive father. It's
amazing how empathetic he makes the discernibly brutish character in
Udaan and
now this film without taking the character's arc through the filmy range from
villainy to repentance. Thanks to Roy's dignified damned Dad's act,
2
States is as much a father-son story as a girl-boy thing.
Not every sequence works here. I found Revathi's singing performance (arranged
by Krish) a little too syrupy and Alia's anti-dowry speech at a brassy Punjabi
wedding a little too contrived.
Minor slip-ups. Most of the time cultural differences are articulately pinned
down in the film. Debutant director Abhishek Varman knows how to tell a story
embedding individual scenes with a distinctive personality without straining
for effect. The narrative traverses a number of cities - Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai
- searching out enchanting pockets of storytelling for the couple to grow into.
This is a film that never forgets to surprise even when going about the task of
telling a story that can only end one way. Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt ensure
that their mutual participation in the rites of courtship, copulation, conflict
and reconciliation yields a harvest of hefty scenes. Their performances display
a natural flair for understatement underlined by a deep understanding of the
language of commercial cinema. And yes, they look so made for each other, their
compatibility is almost karmic.
Two world, two cultures, two families, one love story....
2 States re-defines
and rejuvenates the love-marriage space. Simple and yet striking, gorgeous and
graceful, this is a film where we come away hankering to know what happens to
the couple after the film is over.
The film is put together with the stress on lightness of tone. From the clothes
that Ananya and Krish wear to the spaces they inhabit... you won't find them
fuelling a filmy flamboyance into the narrative. Binod Pradhan's cinematography
is the opposite of epic. And that's the truth which these urban characters
represent.
And yes, Alia dressed as a bride looks like a doll. In a way the honesty that
her face never ceases to express symbolizes what this film strives to do.
2
States creates a world where characters don't shout to be heard. They
just belong to a world where being proper, politically or otherwise, is not
always a pre-condition.
